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Show A-8 Wed/Thurs/Fri, October 21-23, 2020 The Park Record Meetings and agendas Red CaRd RobeRts TO PUBLISH YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES AND AGENDAS, PLEASE EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@PARKRECORD.COM A surprising fish story AGENDA SUMMIT COUNTY COUNCIL Wednesday, October 21, 2020 NOTICE is hereby given that the Summit County Council will meet electronically, via Zoom, on Wednesday, October 21, 2020, at the anchor location Sheldon Richins Building, 1885 West Ute Blvd, Park City, UT 84098 (All times listed are general in nature, and are subject to change by the Council Chair) To view Council meeting, live, visit the "Summit County, Utah" Facebook page at 1:25 p.m. OR To participate in Council meeting: Join Zoom webinar: https://zoom.us/j/772302472 OR To listen by phone only: Dial 1-301-715-8592, Webinar ID: 772 302 472 11:40 AM Closed Session - Security (20 min); Property acquisition (30 min); Litigation (45 min) 1:15 PM - Council Members log into Zoom meeting 1:25 PM Work Session 1) Pledge of Allegiance 2) 1:30 PM - Presentation of Park City Chamber/Convention & Visitors Bureau Summer visitation results, and Winter marketing efforts; Bill Malone, Jim Powell, and Jennifer Wesselhoff (30 min) 3) 2:00 PM - Presentation by Via Mobility LLC, to discuss company philosophy and approach to transit planning and operations; Daniel Ramot and Caroline Rodriguez (60 min) 4) 3:00 PM - Budget discussions regarding revenues and fund balances; Matt Leavitt (60 min) 4:00 PM Convene as the Board of Equalization 1) Discussion and possible approval of 2020 stipulations; Stephanie Larsen, Travis Lewis, and LoraLea McKnight (15 min) Dismiss as the Board of Equalization 4:15 PM Consideration of Approval 1) Council Minutes dated October 7, 2020, and October 9, 2020 (5 min) 2) 4:20 PM - Council comments (15 min) 3) 4:35 PM - Manager comments (10 min) 4) 4:45 PM - Discussion and possible approval of Joint Public Health Order 2020-10; Rich Bullough and Jami Brackin (10 min) 5) 4:55 PM - Discussion and possible approval of appeal of property tax assessment on Parcel FT-2118-1; Curtis Cox and Travis Lewis (20 min) 6) 5:15 PM - Continued discussion and possible action regarding appeal of the Community Development Director’s denial of a building permit to extend the deck of Appellant’s twin home condominium unit in the development known as The Cove at Sun Peak at Parcel No. CSP-8B-A; Michael J. Radford, Appellant; Pat Putt and Blaine Thomas (45 min) 6:00 PM Public Input If you would like to submit comments to Council, please email publiccomments@summitcounty.org by 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21st. If you wish to interact with Council at 6:00 p.m., for public input or the public hearing, please follow the "Public Comment and Public Hearing Instructions". Continued public hearing and possible action regarding a Special Exception for an increase of disturbance area (~20,000) on a on a ridgeline/hilltop for a ~9,300 Accessory Building, located at 6105 N Silver Sage Dr, Highland Estates, Parcel HE-B-263; Zachary Strauss, Applicant, Amir Caus, AICP, County Planner Members of the County Council, presenters, and members of public, may attend by electronic means, using Zoom (phone or video). Such members may fully participate in the proceedings as if physically present. The anchor location for purposes of the electronic meeting is the Sheldon Richins Building auditorium, 1885 W. Ute Blvd., Park City, Utah Individuals with questions, comments, or needing special accommodations pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding this meeting may contact Annette Singleton at (435) 336-3025 letteRs to the editoR Amendment G will not help education Amendment G is too vague and is harmful for educational funding in the future! I am a special education educator. I love students and individuals with disabilities. I understand their many challenges. We all want good services for individuals with disabilities, but Amendment G is not the way to provide them. Because Amendment G includes both “students and individuals with disabilities,” the taxes which should be used for funding public education could be used for social services, medical expenses, transportation, housing, etc. In 1945, Utah voters designated the funds from income taxes to support public education, probably because of the larger number of school-age children in Utah. In 1995, however, an amendment was passed to share educational funds with higher education. I have been a regular teacher, special education teacher and administrator, and spent 10 years after my retirement at the Utah Legislature following educational programs and funding. I watched legislators haggle over educational funding each year and reduce the funding as much as possible. Amendment G would further dilute public education funding. One way to find out if Utah is making the best effort in funding education is to see what proportion of personal income goes to support public education. A report, produced each year and often called Educational Funding Effort, compares Utah to similar states. Before 1995, Utah ranked 20th in the United States in the proportion of personal income going to education. Now Utah ranks 39th because we spend a much smaller proportion of taxes on public education. As Utah reduced Educational Funding Effort, student scores declined. In 1995, Utah K-12 students tested well above the national average. Now Utah K-12 student scores are at or below the national average. Please help public education and vote no on Amendment G! Lynda Simmons Taylorsville Math doesn’t add up The math on Amendment G doesn’t add up. Supporters say that one pot of money — income tax — is too volatile to fund one thing — education. So they want to stabilize education funding by funding one more thing — services for children and those with disabilities from that same one pot of money. Two things for the price of one? The amendment neglects to mention that those important services cost $600 million a year. So they’re going to fund underfunded education by taking away $600 million from education and using it for something else? Something doesn’t add up. Is it coincidence that paying for an additional $600 million of services from the education fund suddenly frees up $600 million in the general fund, no strings attached? Where exactly will the legislators spend that extra $600 million? We stopped their ill-conceived tax reform with a referendum. Now they’ve dressed tax reform in lamb’s clothing — think of the children and people with disabilities! Who would vote against them? But this is NOT a vote about services for these people, the state will continue to provide these critical services regardless of which pot of money is used. This really is a vote for tax reform that will affect us for generations. Changing the state Constitution should be done in plain sight. When it’s done in the dark like this, we are left to speculate why. Is the Legislature afraid to share their true intentions? Why? Why does the Legislature want access to an additional $600 million a year freed from any spending restrictions? Say NO to back room deals. Demand transparency. Expect high-quality tax policy. Vote NO on Amendment G! We spoke and they repealed the tax reform, yet they still didn’t get the message. Speak up again and let them hear you! Kris Campbell Silver Creek Officials must condemn conduct I am not surprised that the mayor of Park City, the City Council and the Summit County Council have tried to incite hatred against me for certain comments I made during a Zoom meeting of the Town of Hideout by way of “Statement” masquerading as “News” on the Park City website. Saddened, a little, but not surprised. Perhaps I should just ignore the statement but that is not my practice. The remarks I made to the Hideout Town Council may have been intemperate, and for that I apologize to the Town Council, but they were understandable in context. By Amy Roberts On a prior Zoom meeting of the Town Council, everyone attending was treated by vicious criminals to the federal and state cyber offenses related to Zoombombing including hard-core pornography, videos for burning bodies and other attendees trying to assume the identities of the Town Council members. A prior Zoom meeting of the town even had to be abandoned due to these same tactics and people even trying to hijack control of the meeting platform itself. Before making my comments on the 13th, I had also just learned that the mayor of Hideout and certain council members had been personally and repeatedly harassed and threatened. It was to those jerks that my umbrage was directed. Certainly not towards any persons expressing legitimate concerns about the proposed development. I support public involvement. Just not public thuggery. I call on Mayor Beerman and the members of the Park City Council and the Summit County Council to honestly acknowledge the context of my comments and to condemn the vile conduct of their supporters in attacking the elected officials of the Town of Hideout. If they do not do so then they must acknowledge their complicity in the horrible conduct leading to my remarks. I wish, with 20/20 hindsight that I chosen other words. I do not regret my detest for the actions of the real villains here. Nor for the hypocrites. Bruce R. Baird Salt Lake City All in this together I want to give a big shout-out to Summit County Clubhouse and ask that everyone help support it through a contribution during Live PC Give PC, Nov. 6! The Clubhouse has only been open for a year, but as a founding member I can personally attest to the life-changing power of the program. SCC is a place where adults like me with a mental illness diagnosis recover our lives by joining a community that emphasizes our talents and builds our self-confidence. In the process of working together with my fellow members to run the Clubhouse as a nonprofit business I have learned employment skills like office management, accounting and computer technology as well as teamwork and other important life skills. I just read that cases of depression have tripled in the United States during the COVID-19 Please see Letters, A-9 “Nothing surprises me anymore.” It’s a common refrain, usually doled out by those of a certain age, one where an ample amount of life experience is met with a dash of cynicism and a dollop of “I’ve seen and heard it all.” There are times I worry I’m nearing that stage. No matter how absurd or unbelievable something is, often I just can’t seem to lift my eyebrows more than halfway. Unbelievable absurdity simply isn’t that surprising anymore. We see and hear it every day when we watch or read the news and interact with other humans. The problem is, though, I kind of like being surprised. I want to be a little taken aback. Maybe it’s naïve, but I think a little flabbergast is good for us, a reminder to stretch our imagination beyond the boundaries it is familiar with. Given this, I tend to Google phrases like “weird news” and purposefully seek content that gives my eyebrows a full-stretch workout. This was accomplished last week when I read an article about police begging the public to stop calling them about a fish. When police in Cape Cod were inundated with emergency calls, the Wareham Department of Natural Resources in Massachusetts explained it had bigger fish to fry and posted this message to its social media pages: “We are aware of a sunfish in Broad Cove. We have checked on it, and it is doing normal sunfish activities. Its swimming. It is not stranded or suffering. The sunfish is FINE. Don’t be jealous just because it’s not swimming weather anymore! PLEASE STOP CALLING THE POLICE DEPARTMENT ABOUT THIS SUNFISH!!” Even though we live in a town where every week in this very paper, you’ll find mention of a police report involving wildlife — usually a moose sitting in someone’s yard — I still found myself surprised that people would call 911 to report spotting a fish in the ocean. Are we that far removed from reality and the natural world that filing a police Are we that far removed from reality and the natural world that filing a police report seems like an acceptable course of action after spotting a fish in water or a moose in the mountains?” report seems like an acceptable course of action after spotting a fish in water or a moose in the mountains? It is my sincere hope that the next time the Park City Police Department or Summit County Sheriff’s Office receive calls about a deer or a bobcat or a moose, they post to a social media page: “Stop calling 911 when you spot wildlife doing normal wildlife activities. Don’t be jealous just because you have to work and animals get to spend their day just bumbling about! If the animal is not actively eating a small child or otherwise endangering your life, we are not interested in taking your call.” Unfortunately, this hope is about a month too late for a moose who once moseyed around Prospector. She had been spotted in the neighborhood for several days before the state Division of Wildlife Resources sent officers to tranquilize and relocate her somewhere in central Utah. It was a decision that seemed both odd and sad to me. Though there was no DNA test, presumably it was the same moose I’d encountered a number of times in early September. I live in Prospector and for many days I’d see her amble about as I walked my dogs, or notice her snoozing in the shade in someone’s yard. One day, my walk was delayed due to the moose and her juvenile calf eating apples off the tree in my front yard. I didn’t call the police; I told the dogs their walk would have to wait and took pictures from the safety of my porch. It seems rather unfair that the moose now has to live in someplace like Fillmore just because she was doing normal moose activities. Seeing wildlife in the wild is something that shouldn’t surprise us. And while it’s no longer surprising that people call the police to report the sighting, it is silly. Amy Roberts is a freelance writer, longtime Park City resident and the proud owner of two rescued Dalmatians, Stanley and Willis. Follow her on Twitter @ amycroberts. Wildfire smoke hazardous Millions in the West subject to health effects of pollution MATTHEW BROWN AND CAMILLE FASSETT Associated Press SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Wildfires churning out dense plumes of smoke as they scorch huge swaths of the U.S. West Coast have exposed millions of people to hazardous pollution levels, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm, according to an Associated Press analysis of pollution data and interviews with physicians, health authorities and researchers. Smoke at concentrations that topped the government’s charts for health risks and lasted at least a day enshrouded counties inhabited by more than 8 million people across five states in recent weeks, AP’s analysis shows. Major cities in Oregon, which has been especially hard hit, last month suffered the highest pollution levels they’ve ever recorded when powerful winds supercharged fires that had been burning in remote areas and sent them hurtling to the edge of densely populated Portland. Medical complications began arising while communities were still enveloped in smoke, including hundreds of additional emergency room visits daily in Oregon, according to state health officials. “It’s been brutal for me,” said Barb Trout, a 64-year-old retiree living south of Portland in the Willamette Valley. She was twice taken to the emergency room by ambulance following severe asthmatic reactions, something that had never happened to her before. Trout had sheltered inside as soon as smoke rolled into the valley just after Labor Day but within days had an asthma attack that left her gasping for air and landed her in the ER. Two weeks later, when smoke from fires in California drifted into the valley, she had an even more violent reaction that Trout described as a near-death experience. “It hit me quick and hard — more so than the first one. I wasn’t hardly even breathing,” she recalled. After getting stabilized with drugs, Trout was sent home but the specter of a third attack now haunts her. She and her husband installed an alarm system so she can press a panic button when in distress to call for help. “It’s put a whole new level on my life,” she said. “I’m trying not to live in fear, but I’ve got to be really really cautious.” In nearby Salem, Trout’s pul- monologist Martin Johnson said people with existing respiratory issues started showing up at his hospital or calling his office almost immediately after the smoke arrived, many struggling to breathe. Salem is in Marion county, which experienced eight days of pollution at hazardous levels during a short period, some of the worst conditions seen the West over the past two decades, according to AP’s analysis. Most of Johnson’s patients are expected to recover but he said some could have permanent loss of lung function. Then there are the “hidden” victims who Johnson suspects died from heart attacks or other problems triggered by the poor air quality but whose cause of death will be chalked up to something else. “Many won’t show up at the hospital or they’ll die at home or they’ll show up at hospice for other reasons, such as pneumonia or other complications,” Johnson said. Based on prior studies of pollution-related deaths and the number of people exposed to recent fires, researchers at Stanford University estimated that as many as 3,000 people over 65 in California alone died prematurely after being exposed to smoke during a six-week period beginning Aug. 1. Hundreds more deaths could have occurred in Washington over several weeks of poor air caused by the fires, according to University of Washington researchers. The findings for both states have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. No such estimate was available for Oregon. A California heat wave on Thursday prompted warnings of extreme fire danger and some precautionary powerline shutdowns. Wildfires are a regular occurrence in Western states but they’ve grown more intense and dangerous as a changing climate dries out forests thick with trees and underbrush from decades of fire suppression. What makes the smoke from these fires dangerous are particles too small for the naked eye to see that can be breathed in and cause respiratory problems. On any given day, western fires can produce 10 times more particles than are produced by all other pollution sources including vehicle emissions and industrial facilities, said Shawn Urbanski, a U.S. Forest Service smoke scientist. Fires across the West emitted more than a million tons of the particles in 2012, 2015 and 2017, and almost as much in 2018 — the year a blaze in Paradise, California killed 85 people and burned 14,000 houses, generating a thick plume that blanketed portions of Northern California for weeks. Figures for 2017 and 2018 are preliminary. A confluence of meteorological events made the smoke especially bad this year: first, fierce winds up and down the coast whipped fires into a fury, followed in Oregon by a weather inversion that trapped smoke close to the ground and made it inescapable for days. Hundreds of miles to the south in San Francisco, smoke turned day into night, casting an eerie orange pall over a city where even before the pandemic facemasks had become common at times to protect against smoke. AP’s analysis of smoke exposure was based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data compiled from hundreds of air quality monitoring stations. Census data was used to determine the numbers of people living in affected areas of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana. At least 38 million people live in counties subjected to pollution considered unhealthy for the general population for five days,C according to AP’s analysis. That included more than 25 million people in California, 7.2 million in Washington, 3.5 million in Oregon, 1 million in Idaho and p 299,000 people in Montana. The state totals for the numbere of people exposed to unhealthyt air on a given day were derivedI from counties where at least onet monitoring site registered un-h C healthy air. Scientists studying long-term health problems have found cor-m relations between smoke expo-u sure and decreased lung function,a weakened immune systems andG higher rates of flu. That includest studies from northwestern Mon-t tana communities blanketed withm y smoke for weeks in 2017. “Particulate matter enters your lungs, it gets way down deep, itM irrigates the lining and it possiblyP enters your bloodstream,” said University of Montana professor Erin Landguth. “We’re seeing the effects.” The coronavirus raises a compounding set of worries: An emerging body of research connects increased air pollution with greater rates of infection and severity of symptoms, said Gabriela Goldfarb, manager of environmental health for the Oregon Health Authority. Climate experts say residents of the West Coast and Northern Rockies should brace for more frequent major smoke events, as warming temperatures and drought fuel bigger, more intense fires. Their message is that climate change isn’t going to bring worse conditions: they are already here. The scale of this year’s fires is pushing the envelope” of wildfire severity modeled out to 2050, L |